The people's voice. [volume], August 02, 1963, VACATION ISSUE NO. 2, Page Page Two, Image 2

About The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969

Image provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

                
Copper Kings: Purveyors of Mineral and Political Wealth
Insignificant Gold Strike On Silver Bow Creek
Leads to Silver, Then Copper and the
Storied "Richest Hill On Earth
When the gold strikes of the 1860's are
discussed, one made along little Silver Bow
Creek flowing down from the Continental
Divide is usually dealt with in another his
tory book chapter. G. 0. Humphrey, Wil
liam Allison, Dennis Leary and Alexander
Scott were prospecting out of Alder Gulch
in October, 1864, when they came upon
some old diggings. Although it was shallow,
there was enough of the yellow metal to
justify calling it the Missoula Lode and
forming a mining district.
Soon more prospectors came along and
Silver Bow City, Rockery McMinnville and
Butte City sprang up. The gold played out,
and Silver Bow City and Rocker quickly
became ghost towns; indeed, in 1874 there
were only about 60 people living in Butte
itself. It was then that Congress passed the
law requiring a certain amount of work be
done on mining claims or the owner faced
forfeiture. William Farlin, generally con
sidered the man who saved Butte from
oblivion, began taking over abandoned
claims, guessing correctly that there was
mineral wealth in the hard quartz.
Exploitation of the real wealth in the
richest hill on earth", of course, came
with the storied Copper Kings: William A.
Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus
Heinze. These men were to figure so strong
ly in the political upheavals before state
hood that this aspect will be dealt with in
the final section on that subject. But the
arrival of the three in Butte, the evolving
» .
of their fantastic fortunes, a note
on the kind of men they were seems appro
priate here.
The first to come was Clark, in 1872, He
had followed the gold seekers to Bannack
in 1863, described by one who saw him as
"a little, red-beaded man with a pack on
his back ... he wore a red shirt, an old
army coat with one of the tails burned off
by too close a proximity to the fire". He
did. not yet wear the beard which covered
a sharp chin, and his high thin voice was
not yet raised in flowery oratory. He was
not a likeable man, and kept much to him
self. But be quickly saw the route he would
take: not gold, but merchandising. By 1867
he had expanded his business to Virginia
City and had a contract to haul mail from
Missoula to Walla Walla. When he began
buying mining property in Butte in 1872,
Clark was already a man of wealth. With
typical sagacity, he went east to the Co
lumbia School of Mines to study metallurgy.
When William Farlin defaulted on a mort
gage in 1875, Clark obtained the Dexter
Stamp Mill, and he owned a bank in Deer
Lodge and a good deal of real estate.
Marcus Daly, an Irish immigrant, arrived
in Butte in 1876 after serving bis mining
apprenticeship in California and Nevada,
He had made some powerful mining con
tacts: George HearSt (father of William
Randolph), James Ben AM Haggin and
Lloyd Tevis. Employed by Walker Brothers,
Salt Lake City miners and bankers., Daly
was sent to Butte to examine the Alice, a
silver mine. He stayed to become its mana
ger and one-third owner. In 1880 he sold
the Alice and bought the fabled Anaconda,
developing it with the help of Haggin,
Hearst and Tevis,
Unlike Clark, this uneducated Irishman
was intensely likeable, his popularity leg
endary. But like Clark, with whom he was
friendly at first, Daly was intelligent and
could be and was utterly purposeful and
ruthless. By the turn of the century, he was
wealthy, at war with Clark's political as
pirations, and dying.
The bitterness between Clark and Daly
was not lifelong, as is sometimes thought.
It began in 1888, when a confident Clark
found himself defeated for territorial dele
gate by Thomas H. Clark. He guessed, with
some justification, that Daly had joined
with Sam Hauser and other hanking and
lumbering interests in defeating him. Clark
never forgot this affront, and was to carry
on his vindictive feud for over a decade.
The third in the copper triumvirate was
F. Augustus Heinze, a brash 20-year-old
engineer who came to Butte in 1889 with
a $50,000 inheritance. Quickly sensing the
possibilities, he went to Germany to study
mining and smelting, and returned to work
for the Boston and Montana Consolidated
company. Here he learned the compUcated
vein systems underlying Butte so well that
he began seriously challenging the big in
terests in the courts, including Anaconda,
which was bought out by Standard Oil in
1899 and controlled by the giant and com
plex holding company, Amalgamated.
W. A. Clark was an interested observer
as young Heinze won court cases with sus
picious regularity, the while taking with
impunity the underground wealth of Amal
gamated. Thus a Clark-Heinze coalition
was effected, and by instituting an 8-hour
day in the mines, the partners of expedien
cy even challenged the personal popularity
of Daly. The Clark-Heinze alliance did not
last long after Daly's death in New York
in 1900, and shortly thereafter Amalga
mated assessed Heinze's nuisance value at
around $10 million and bought him out.
Heinze went to New York, where he hoped
to juggle the New York Stock Exchange to
his advantage. His machinations failed and
are blamed by some for the panic of 1907.
He was relatively impoverished and a com
pletely broken man when he died three
years later.
Back in Montana, the War of the Copper
Kings was about over; Daly was dead, and
Amalgamated began buying up the proper
ties of W. A. Clark, by now much more
interested in politics. In 1916, the gigantic
Amalgamated holding company was dis
solved, Standard Oil was no longer in
volved, and the old operating name, Ana
conda, was back to stay.
Contrary to popular belief, the Indian
tribes now considered indigenous to Mon
tana were actually displaced persons, driv
en westward from their ancient homes in
the east by the increasing pressures of
white settlement.
Montana Indians—
(Continued From Page One)
leading up the Rosebud, and Custer was
ordered to follow it. But he was to stay
well in the rear of the Indians so any en
counter could be met with the full com
mand. Custer met the Sioux on June 25,
1876, on the Little Big Horn, convinced he
could defeat them or any combination of
tribes. The fate of Custer and his command
has been dealt with too often to go into
here.
Colonel Nelson A. Miles began building
a cantonment at the mouth of the Tongue
in the fall of 1876, and after a band of
warriors attacked a pack train headed there,
Miles pursued them and south of the Yel
lowstone turned back the main body. Sit
ting Bull, however, escaped to Canada with
his band and was to be a nagging worry to
settlers until his surrender in 1881. Miles
continued a vigorous winter campaign, and
by January, 1877, the mysterious and re
calcitrant Crazy Horse had surrendered and
in March more than 2,000 gave up at Camps
Sheridan and Robinson.
The year 1877 also saw the celebrated
retreat of Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce,
driven in the classic pattern from their
home in Idaho to seek refuge in Canada.
The relentless pursuit of General O. O.
Howard and attempts by Col. Gibbon and
others to stop him in western Montana
were to no avail. But in October, 1877, near
present-day Chinook in northern Montana,
the exhausted Joseph surrendered his Nez
Perce to General Miles, Many believe he
had stopped because he was certain he was
already in Canada.
The Steamboat Era
Until it came to an end with the ad
vancing railroads in the 1880s, Foft Benton
was one of Montana's busiest spots. Head
waters for navigation on the Missouri, this
was a veritable beehive of activity after
the gold strikes in the 1860s demanded
more and more travel and freight via the
Missouri. The first steamboat to come close
to Benton's docks was the "Chippewa",
which arrived in 1869. Until the end of the
era, hundreds of shallow-draft steamers
arrived and left from its crowded levees,
their skilled captains often losing out to
the tricky river bottom, and marauding
Indians who delighted in picking off the
small parties of wood-cutters who strove
to feed the boilers. Thirty-one steamers
arrived in 1866, 39 in 1867, 36 in 1868,
and 24 in 1869. It was in 1867 that $1,
250,000 in raw gold was shipped to St.
Louis.
THE PEOPLE'S VOICE
Published weekly iby The People's Voice
Publishing: Co., at 1206 Lockey Street,
Helena, Montana
HARRY L BILLINGS, Editor
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